Posted on 09/09/2004 7:33:57 AM PDT by TastyManatees
New Questions On Bush Guard Duty
CBS) The military records of the two men running for president have become part of the political arsenal in this campaign – a tool for building up, or blowing up, each candidate’s credibility as America's next commander-in-chief.
While Sen. Kerry has been targeted for what he did in Vietnam, President Bush has been criticized for avoiding Vietnam by landing a spot in the Texas Air National Guard - and then failing to meet some of his obligations.
Did then-Lt. Bush fulfill all of his military obligations? And just how did he land that spot in the National Guard in the first place? Correspondent Dan Rather has new information on the president’s military service – and the first-ever interview with the man who says he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.
...
But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."
Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."
Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
:( Augusta Chronicle won't let me in without giving them all sort of info. Can you copy and paste the letter here?
Please read reply 198, and tell us now if you think that bizarre and complex procedure was likely to have been used to create proportional spacing on a memo in the TANG in 1972.
Yes, it's "possible" to also hit 18 consecutive holes-in-one, blindfolded.
I don't mind that you're a contrarian. Contrarians keep us sharp and honest. But what you are doing with the IBM Executive option is dishonest, unless you tell folks how bizarre and difficult it was to create proportional type on an IBM Executive, and how remote the chance would be that this would have been done on a memo in the TANG in 1972.
All I'm asking for is intellectual honesty.
That I disagree with. Look at the bottoms of the letters, they're uneven.
IMO they were done by a good typist on an IBM Executive or similar, but not by a word-processor. I would have expected the forger to at least get that detail right.
A good question. One of the nice things about the IBM Selectrics was that the ball action was very quick, and the ball would return to the line in time to keep the typing line straight, unless the typist was very fast. Since the ball rotates and moves up and down with each character, as opposed to a traditional arm-type typewriter, which only moves up and down on the SHIFT key, the motion had to be extremely quick.
An extremely fast typist (90 wpm or better, which was fast in those days) could occaisionally get an off line character, but not often. A hunt-and-peck type would never do so.
So the Selectrics were good. Not as perfect as a laser printer, but good.
PING to post 316.........
What's new about that? You are always hanging around weird threads, and if I remember right, you contribute much of the weirdness! LOL! :) {hugs}
If an unknown person handed an ESPN reporter a blurry and choppy video of a long-dead golfer supposedly hitting 18 holes in one in a row, I don't think even ESPN would run the video as gospel truth, and base a special broadcast on it.
That is what CBS has done. It screams forgery.
Yes. See post 316
Another thing that smells is citing an "AFM" (AFM 35-13) as authority for an order. I dunno how it's done in the AF but in the Army, whenever it was considered necessary to cite an authority for an order, the citation would be an "AR" - Army Regulation, not an "FM", field manual. Field manuals told you how may steps per minute and how many inches per step were appropriate for Quick Time March, or how many feet to locate the latrine from the kitchen. They did not have legal force. Almost everyone in the Army (who thought about it) understood that AR's derived their authority form the UCMJ which was public law, an Act of Congress. FM's told you how many onions to put in pound of Army chili. Could be wrong, I'd like to see any similar validated documents from the same period and the same unit.
Why abbreviate "Grp" in the "CYA" (false) document?
Why not write it as "Gp" (The way the next "real" letter does!), or more properly, as "Group" if you're writing to yourself?
Who is Staudt? Is he still alive?
Who is Harris? Is he still alive?
You don't understand. It wasn't difficult to create proportional type; the typewriter did that automatically. I'm a terrible typist, and I used one of these things. The hard part was to right-justify, and these memos are not right-justified.
As I recall, you would not use the phrase "Memo to File," every memorandum that I saw used for tracking purposes used the phrase "Memo for Record."
Also, one of the documents had a spot on it which was analyzed to be low-carb salad dressing. However, the Atkins diet hadn't even been invented yet!
The Wang word processor hit the markets in 1976. Prior to that, there were other word processors, but I don't know anything about them.
At any rate, this is obviously from a word processor, not a typewriter.
Wow it's looking to me like Kerry is getting really really desperate.
I remember reading an article in readers digest in the military submissions section.
A secretary typed a letter for her boss who was a general. In the memo, she abbreviated a lot of terms and the general sent the letter back for correction with the abbreviations circled and the letters DNA.
The secretary had to ask what DNA stood for, it was Do Not Abbreviate.
The small "th" was NOT produced on a Selectric, unless the font ball was swapped out for the SOLE purpose of typing a small "th" and then swapped back. Which makes no sense for a document like this.
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